THE INTERVIEW

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BY KARI WETHINGTON

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON FRANK ROTHENBERG

Past its drab downtown center, Dayton, Ohio, gives

way to suburban sprawl—ranch houses on quiet,

tree-lined streets. Kim Deal lives in one of these—

with her parents. The Pixies bassist/Breeders

leader/indie heroine has owned her own place,

just around the block, since 1990; that’s the house

cluttered with recording equipment and guitars, the

house where she writes songs with her twin sister,

Kelley, who herself lives just a couple minutes away. But since their

mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2003, Kim has moved in

with her parents to help out, and drove back and forth to Chicago

in 2006 to record Mountain Battles, the first Breeders album since

2002’s Title TK, with über-indie producer Steve Albini.

Picket-fence Midwestern domesticity
aside, the Deal sisters have indulged in their
share of rock’n’roll excess—Kelley was busted
for heroin possession in 1995 and has since
gotten clean, while Kim went to rehab in
2002 and relishes her anonymity out here in
the burbs. After a quick tour through town
in her ’ 95 Volvo on a brisk January afternoon,
Kim, 46, throws a Duraflame log into the
fireplace at her house, sips a mocha, and
speaks—candidly, self-deprecatingly, self-
effacingly—about her 20-year journey from
rock’s favorite kid sister to its favorite wacky
aunt, in a gregarious, lived-in voice that’s
huskier than her distinctive baby-girl vocals.
She begins: “Let me tell you, missy…”